Silent Retreats

By Philip F. Deaver

Book Overview

Caught in the muddle of modern life, eyes gazing at the middle distance, the characters in "Silent Retreats" search, down roads paved by custom and dotted by the absurd, for escape, refuge, or, at... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0820309818
• ISBN13: 9780820309811
• Release Date: January 1988
• Publisher: Univ of Georgia Pr
• Weight: 1.30 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.8" x 0.8" x 5.8"

Customer Reviews

Arcola Girls.... Award Winner. Truthful and could be any Midwest Town

OK... This hits close to home. The author grew up in my home town. I dated Arcola Girls too... Two of them to be exact. The author, grew up and graduated high school with my mom so I can almost taste and smell these stories in my mind. On the verge of another "Cola War", I always love to read these stories. Central Illinois is wonderful place to grow up. Deaver captures what it is to grow up and flourish in the flat lands of the Embrass River valley. He can tell the tale and make me feel just like I am there. I have driven those same roads.... American Grafitti for the Midwest! Ingrum

This book should not be out of print

In Silent Retreats, Philip Deaver shows us what so few writers can: the sometimes delicate, sometimes harrowing, shifting of real emotion beneath the everyday. With deft turns of phrase and a sharp eye for telling detail, Deaver's haunted runners, love-struck teens, and overstressed businessmen seeking serenity reflect to us things about ourselves we have always known, but never stated. In the early-60s, small Illinois town setting of "Arcola Girls", an O Henry Award winning story, Deaver depicts with tenderness teenage love, longing, and loss. Why this book is out of print is beyond me.